I agree and disagree with many aspects of this blog. First off, these claims aren't specified for a certain age group. High school students, especially those in the higher grades, are almost programmed at this point to recognize rules and either follow them, or not and face the consequences. Certain students really need rules and feel more comfortable if they are aware of them. For this reason I believe certain classroom rules are necessary to post or go over in the beginning of the year at least once. Ensuring students follow them is up to the teacher. If he/ she allows the students to not follow the rules they posted, then they shouldn't expect the students to follow these rules in the future. By not consistently renforcing the rules a teacher wasted his/ her time by even posting them. In this way, I agree with the blog post in that it's more about reinforcing the rules during class time and by using engaging activities. The characteristics of engaging activities were also accurate in my opinion however I do not agree that worksheets themselves are disengaging. Worksheets are not the activity, they usually just include directions for the activity at hand. All in all, I believe it is the combination of the enforcement of rules, together with an engaging activity that really ensure the students have the highest academic success.
Interesting points about both rules and worksheets. Why do you think the authors were critical of worksheets? Now that you have some experience, what distinguishes an engaging worksheet from a disengaging one?- fogleman
Interesting points about both rules and worksheets. Why do you think the authors were critical of worksheets? Now that you have some experience, what distinguishes an engaging worksheet from a disengaging one? -